San Lucas Band

San Lucas Band

About San Lucas Band

This record is an example of deconstruction as a consequence of purity. It is not a synthetic process but it is completely organic. Those who are thought to be of the avant-garde are proven to be just another cog in the wheel of imitation because their intensions are aimed at the pretensions of their being something they are not. This record is reality at its pinnacle. The melodies that comprise the slow dirges on the first side of the record get contorted and disfigured through the extraneous notes carried out by each instrument. The songs are intensely structured upon closer examination, however, the quality of the instruments and musicianship distorts this structure into a sparse conglomeration of chaos and random harmony. We get the first natural sound of vocal humanity when it is to be believed that Bernardo Mejia – the musical director and violinist – instructs the group to play “Marcha Numero Tres” at the outset of the second track. Bernardo’s individual picture can be seen on the inside of the liner notes. With a sock hat on, he sits in a chair, cradling his violin that appears to be torn apart looking like it was found along the path that winds up to the village, yet he can speak words through his bowing of the strings that people who have put a lifetime of training into the instrument still can’t stutter their way through the phonetics of this magical language. There are four wonderfully informative pages of liner notes that should be experienced while listening to the record to capture the full journey of such remote musicians. The notes compiled and pages were written by ethnomusicologist Linda Lee O’Brien. One could set their mind reeling about how Linda found such inspiring people. Her desire to document such an obscure and remote culture of music was finally realized when this record was released in 1975 by ABC Command. The members of this band are Cakchiquel-Maya Indians, which have a rich spiritual tradition. The San Lucas Band play their traditional “marchas” songs during the Good Friday ceremonies. During the Holy Week, they have a doll dressed up called “Old Mam” who is a shaman god. The band was formed in 1922. Interestingly, the government encouraged military bands to form and the first known band was formed in 1839. The influence of military bands is prominent in the recordings on this album. The traditional military and ceremonial songs are battered by the musicians and upon the first listen, these tracks may not sound appealing at all to someone who was wanting to hear foreign instruments and melodies in scales and harmonies that a Westerner may find exotic. But instead, we are being proposed by familiar instruments in unfamiliar rhythms and scales. The listener must take their first notions of musicianship and set them aside, and just listen to the uniqueness and purity of the sounds emanating from the speakers, for if one listens to the beauty of these traditional pieces, one may find 6/8 time signatures and combinations of notes and rhythms that even John Cage couldn’t have wrote.

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